One of the biggest parts of being in a fraternal organization is service. We all have out mandated hours we have to get every semester, and I’m sure most of your groups have a requirement of attending philanthropy events on campus. Community service and philanthropy are very big parts of our organizations and do a lot of good around our communities. What if we could do these things while helping our communities but also helping our chapters? Well.. this week we are going to talk about our national partnership with FIRST Robotics and how we can utilize this for helping our chapters recruit.
National FIRST Scholarships
Last week we talked about providing scholarships that are sponsored by our local chapters and how we can use that for recruiting in the summer.
https://www.triangle.org/beginning-summer-recruitment/ . However, another scholarship that your chapter can advertise is our national FIRST Robotic scholarships. 4 scholarships are provided through money donated to the Triangle Education Foundation that is for high school senior students involved in FIRST.
Last year over 60 males applied that were attending a school where we currently have a chapter. These were names that those chapters would have never had if we didn’t have these scholarships. If you were one of the chapters to receive names attending your campus this fall you should be contacting those names ASAP! If your chapter did not receive any names, start advertising this scholarship and get ready for next year! The link to this years scholarship is below.
https://app.smarterselect.com/programs/59731-Triangle-Education-Foundation
Volunteering
There are so many great opportunities to get involved with FIRST®. Whether you are able to support a local team, participate as a coach or referee, or even help Triangle out as a Triangle FIRST ® Ambassador, you will be contributing to the STEM community in undeniable ways!
As a Triangle FIRST ® Ambassador, you would be volunteering at one of the Regional or National FIRST ® events or Championships. Typically, ambassadors will be stationed at the Triangle booth, engaging with FIRST ® competitors, volunteers, alumni, and family members introducing them to Triangle, the support we offer, our National scholarship, and much more!
All volunteers (whether volunteering for Triangle or in another capacity) need to register as a volunteer on FIRST’s website, so please be sure to complete that final step! Any questions can be directed to jeff@triangle.org or FIRST@triangle.org.
Volunteering is a great way to develop a relationship with not only students, but teachers, coaches, parents, and other FIRST volunteers. These are are all great people to get referrals from or to have them help publicize the scholarships available.
Coaching
If you have any experience in FIRST Robotics you understand how important the coaches are to the team. This is a great opportunity to directly interact with students that might be interested in coming to your campus. The best way to get involved is by reaching out to local high schools and asking about their FIRST program. You can also reach out to Triangle HQ and we can forward you to the FIRST regional director for your region.
Closing
Triangle is proud to partner with FIRST robotics. Both organizations bring positive benefits for each other and for the STEM community. However, this partnership doesn’t mean anything if our students (YOU) don’t get involved. I highly encourage you to checkout a local competition sometime. Personally, I had no idea what FIRST really was until I attended the Indiana State Championship last March. I was blown away at how cool, and advanced this competition was. It truly is an awesome experience and I would love to see more of our chapters get involved. This post might have dealt with how we can use FIRST to help us recruit but the bottom line is this is an awesome organization that deserves our support and we as one organization need to start rallying around the cause.
As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me at augie@triangle.org. Look out next week for the next summer recruitment tip. If there are any topics you would like to see covered please feel free to email me. Have a great rest of your week!